In a storage area network (SAN), a SAN management application monitors and manages manageable entities in the SAN. The manageable entities include storage arrays, connectivity devices, and hosts. Typically, software components known as agents execute on the hosts for gathering, reporting, and monitoring the manageable entities in the SAN. The manageable entities are responsive to the agents for reporting various status metrics back to the agents and receiving control information from the agents. A management server executes the SAN management application, and oversees the agents. The management server is further responsive to a console having a graphical user interface (GUI) for receiving and displaying operator parameters with a SAN operator.
The agents periodically transmit management information to the management application. The management information pertains to performance and statistical data of the manageable entities that the agent is monitoring, and is employed to update and maintain a managed object database (MODB). The managed object database stores collective information on the manageable entities across the SAN for responding to queries from the management application. Such queries include available storage, used storage, configured and in-use devices, and frequency of usage, for example, and is employed to generate reports on trending analysis, current utilization, usage projections, and other reporting, accounting and maintenance operations.
The SAN management application invokes other sub-applications for performing various SAN operations, such as gathering and reporting statistical data in the SAN. The sub-applications are organized as products having features for providing the particular gathering, reporting or control functionality. SAN data gathering, processing, and reporting ranges from broadly characterized to highly detailed, depending on features desired by each particular SAN site (user organization). Certain users may not require or employ all particular features available via the SAN management application. Accordingly, SAN sub-applications, or products, are licensed to permit users to select licenses for products having desired features, and omit licenses for undesired features.